Today in History

1789: Thomas Jefferson was confirmed by the Senate to be the first United States secretary of state; John Jay, the first chief justice; Edmund Randolph, the first attorney general.

1892: John Philip Sousa and his newly formed band performed publicly for the first time, at the Stillman Music Hall in Plainfield, N.J.

1937: The radio drama "The Shadow," starring Orson Welles, premiered on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

1954: The Japanese commercial ferry Toya Maru sank during a typhoon in the Tsugaru Strait, claiming more than 1,150 lives.

1960: The first-ever debate between presidential nominees took place in Chicago as Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon faced off before a national TV audience.

1964: The situation comedy "Gilligan's Island" premiered on CBS-TV.

1991: Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure in Oracle, Ariz., called Biosphere 2. They emerged from Biosphere on this date in 1993.

2009: Film director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police on an international warrant as he arrived in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. Polanski had fled the U.S. in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski spent two months in a Swiss jail and served seven months of house arrest before Switzerland's government decided against extraditing him to the United States.

2013: It was revealed that some workers at the National Security Agency had misused the government's secret surveillance systems at least 12 times over the previous decade, including instances where they spied on spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, according to embarrassing new details disclosed by the agency's inspector general.